{"id":333400,"date":"2026-03-07T07:15:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T07:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/333400\/"},"modified":"2026-03-07T07:15:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T07:15:10","slug":"photos-tell-stories-of-the-ocean-in-an-era-of-warming-seas-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/333400\/","title":{"rendered":"Photos tell stories of the ocean in an era of warming seas \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

During the summer of 2024, I began making underwater images of jellyfish<\/a> off the Sligo<\/a> coast. That experience shifted my photography<\/a> practice. I realised I wanted to focus my work on telling vital stories about the ocean, particularly in this era of warming seas<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The sea has always been a constant presence. I grew up beside the Atlantic in Sligo, where my parents were keen scuba divers. Jacques Cousteau\u2019s The Silent World instilled a sense of wonder that never left me. In my 20s I spent three months in Madagascar on a marine research project using scuba to collect scientific data. My wider photographic practice has long explored how landscapes hold intangible stories; now that inquiry has gone under water.<\/p>\n

Through a commission from Belfast Photo Festival<\/a>, I began working with Dr Ewan Hunter, a behavioural ecologist at the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute. Our conversations explored how science and art might meet. Scientists and artists both act as witnesses to the world, translating observation into different forms of understanding.<\/p>\n

Ewan introduced me to otoliths, tiny ear stones in fish, that record their lives in layers. Like tree rings, they carry a chronology of migrations, feeding and environmental change. Salmon scales reveal similar invisible cartographies.<\/p>\n

These ideas became the foundation of The Ocean Within, a photographic project exploring fish as living archives of the sea. The work is currently on view at Photo Museum Ireland<\/a> as part of Groundswell<\/a>, a European photography project engaging artists with climate action. In a time of ecological uncertainty, the project asks how we might learn to listen below the waterline, to remember the ocean within.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe Ocean Within. Photograph: Yvette Monahan \"TheThe Ocean Within. Photograph: Yvette Monahan \"TheThe Ocean Within. Photograph: Yvette Monahan \"TheThe Ocean Within. Photograph: Yvette Monahan \"TheThe Ocean Within. Photograph: Yvette Monahan \"TheThe Ocean Within. Photograph: Yvette Monahan \"TheThe Ocean Within. Photograph: Yvette Monahan \"TheThe Ocean Within. Photograph: Yvette Monahan \"TheThe Ocean Within. Photograph: Yvette Monahan <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"During the summer of 2024, I began making underwater images of jellyfish off the Sligo coast. That experience…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":333401,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2885,61,60,3738,42235,14169,80,976],"class_list":["post-333400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-climate-change","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-nature","tag-photo-museum-ireland","tag-sligo","tag-technology","tag-weekendreview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/333401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}